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hristian Freedom 



An Address Delivered in the Old 
South Church, Boston, Massachusetts, at 
the Morning Service, February !\, 19 17, 
by the Rev. George A. Gordon, D.D. 



Printed for the Standing Committee 
of the Old South Society by the 
Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



D5TO 

.IS- 



COPYRIGHT, I917 
BY THE OLD SOUTH SOCIETY 



FEB 16 1917 



)G1,A457102 



Christian Freedom 



For freedom did Christ set us free: 
stand fast therefore, and be not en- 
tangled again in a yoke of bondage. 

— GALATIANS V. 1. 

FREEDOM and slavery are in uttermost 
contrast in the lives of human beings. 
The Greeks, whose tongue Paul wrote 
-and spoke with power, divided their race into 
two classes: the class of the slave and the class 
of the freeman. Slavery they regarded as the 
lowest degradation; freedom as the highest 
exaltation ahke of the outward life and the in- 
ward life. Such has been the feehng of all the 
greater peoples through the whole of human 
history. Slavery has meant physical, intellec- 
tual, and spiritual misery, an afflicted existence, 
an existence robbed of worth and joy; freedom 
has meant physical, intellectual, and spiritual 
worth, power, gladness, and hope. Here all 
Americans, of whatever origin, whether native 
or adopted, stand. 

Americans were born into freedom; they in- 
herited a world of freedom! Their country is 
the monumental symbol of freedom, first for 

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CHRISTIAN FREEDOM 

the white man, then for the black man and the 
red man, and finally for all men who come here 
and who are worthy to enter our fellowship and 
our service of freedom, who are ready to uphold 
the institutions and the ideals of the American 
Repubhc. The poet Burns, riding over the bat- 
tlefield of Bannockburn, and composing the ode 
wliich Cto'lyle said should be sung with the 
throat of the whirlwind, sings not only for all 
the true sons of his native country, in all their 
generations, but also for all true Americans 
everywhere: 

" Wha will be a traitor knave? 
' Wha can fill a coward's grave? 
Wha sae base as be a slave? — 
Let him turn, and flee!'' 

The sovereign gift of Jesus to the world was 
freedom, — freedom for the spirit that should 
eventually cover the earth with its own forms 
and institutions. And Paul, the greatest dis- 
ciple of Jesus here, as elsewhere, seized liis 
Master's rehgion at the heart, and in the text, 
translated accurately in Standard Bible, set 
before the world this double gift of Christian 
freedom: "For freedom did Christ set us free." 
Here are the two great aspects of freedom: the 
interior freedom of the spirit and the gradual, 
progressive freedom both in religion and in 
poHtical life. These are the two aspects of 
Christian freedom that I am to discuss with 

you this morning. 

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CHRISTIAN FREEDOM 

I. Freedom of the Mind 

CHRISTIAN freedom begins in the mind ; it 
is interior, it is spiritual. It is freedom from 
the domination of wrong ideas, false notions, 
base superstitions, evil purposes, brutal pas- 
sions; it is emancipation from a world in the 
mind that is false, wrong, wretched. Accord- 
ing to Christianity there can be no freedom that 
does not begin in the mind; and this interior 
freedom takes two great directions: it concerns 
the being and the character of God, his disposi- 
tion toward mankind, his government of the 
world. Think of the notions, false, base, horri- 
ble, that have for ages darkened the face of the 
Most High and made men cringe in his presence 
and try to bribe him into doing right, to propi- 
tiate him into good-will toward his own children ! 
Christianity is, first of all, an emancipation 
from this vast and wretched world of false and 
degrading notions that have blotted out the be- 
nignity of the Supreme Being from the sphere 
of human vision. 

This emancipation concerns not God only 
but also man. An equal number of false, mis- 
taken, debasing notions have grown up in regard 
to human life; this tyranny of false and debas- 
ing ideas and views holds men in wrong-doing, 
drives them into courses of shame, and will not 
let them escape. Christianity makes men free 
in their ideas about themselves, their kind, 
their constitution, the good for which they 

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CHRISTIAN FREEDOM 

were made, and enables them to see what is 
essentigd good. Inward freedom, — that is the 
first word in Christianity, freedom of the mind. 
Jesus spoke no greater words in all his minis- 
try than these: "Ye shall know the truth and 
the truth shall make you free." True ideas on 
any subject, sincerely entertained, make a true 
mind; a true and a truth-loving mind is the 
free mind, and it alone is free. 

Jesus was persecuted by the State and finally 
he was put to death by the State; but he founded 
a kingdom of truth in freedom and a kingdom 
of freedom in truth. He had perfect confidence 
in the truth in the hands of freedom, and of 
freedom as the child of truth. As I have said, 
his greatest apostle, free-born, a citizen of the 
Roman Empire as he was, perhaps because he 
was free-born, seized upon the great central 
gift and promise of his Master to mankind of 
immediate interior freedom and of ultimate 
external freedom. That double freedom was 
Paul's gospel to the Empire. There is an epic 
in the life of this monumental man who had so 
long and in vain sought freedom from a world 
of evil superstitions and false notions about 
God and about himself. The great emancipa- 
tion came to him when he became a disciple of 
Jesus; then he stepped forth as a man made 
free within and made for freedom in a free world. 

In this apostolic succession we must place 
the Phrygian slave, Epictetus, who loved free- 
dom with a mighty love and who asked this 

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CHRISTIAN FREEDOM 

great question: "Who made you a slave, Nero 
or thyself?" Freedom began with him in the 
mind, in the soul, and this is the story behind 
the achievement of real freedom everywhere. 

The Pilgrims, our prophets of freedom, began 
here. Freedom was first of all a mental passion 
with them, cherished in old England, cherished 
in Holland, cherished in the wilderness of New 
England; more and more they sought to be 
free within. We think of the mistakes, the 
blunders, the inconsistencies of the Pilgrims 
and the Puritans; we dwell on these altogether 
unmagnanimously and too much. Here is their 
central bequest which made them great and 
which makes them greater as the generations 
run. They began with freedom in their souls; 
that was their passion; more and more it came 
to them; more and more it is coming to the 
world, and the Pilgrims especially are among 
the prophets of this greatest thing in human 
history, — the free mind in the truth, the mind 
made free by the truth. 

n. Outward Freedom 

TURN now to the other aspect of Chris- 
tian freedom. While Christian freedom 
begins in the mind it does not end there. It is 
boimd to flow outward in its true ideas, and 
more and more it seeks forms and institutions 
accordaint with its own character. In the hfe 
of each tree there resides a plan, and that plan 

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CHRISTIAN FREEDOM 

conforms to itself the tree in which the hfe is 
to dwell; oak, ash, pine, maple, elm, each be- 
comes the form, lifted into existence, grown 
into existence by the impulse of the interior 
building life. In the same way the free mind 
seeks to utter itself in forms and in institutions 
accordant with its own character. Here we 
touch the deepest struggle in all human his- 
tory, — the conflict between the true mind, 
the mind made true by true ideas, seeking to 
express itself in institutions correspondent with 
itself, and the darkened mind, the mind in 
bondage, caUing upon compulsion and force to 
maintain it in the world. There is the central 
conflict in the history of the world: the mind 
made free by true ideas, seeking to express 
itself in institutions and forms accordant with 
its own character, and the mind under the 
domination of false ideas, in part or in whole, 
employing force to maintain itself supreme 
against freedom and against truth; there, I 
repeat, is the central conflict and the glory of 
human history. 

More and more for the last one hundred and 
fifty years Providence has been throwing into 
the hands of the people, among growing democ- 
racies, the cause of freedom and the cause of 
truth against autocracy, against absolutism, 
against those whose false notions of their maj- 
esty are supported by compulsion. The first 
great movement was the American Revolution. 
This was seconded by the lurid splendor and 

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CHRISTIAN FREEDOM 

magnificence of the French Revolution; there 
modern democracy was born; there the people 
began to hve in true ideas and in freedom; 
there and then they began to build the free 
commonwealth. 

I beg you to note this great development of 
democracy employed, as it would seem, and as 
I beheve, by Providence to create freedom under 
true ideas and with freedom to create institu- 
tions for the benefit — not of certain classes but 
of all mankind. Modern France is a democracy; 
modern Britain is a democracy; the United 
States of America is a democracy I We speak 
of the blunders of democracies, and it is well 
that we do; we call attention to their mistakes, 
follies, extravagancies, and that is well. But 
fasten your eye upon the central thing, — men 
under the domination, on the whole, of true 
conceptions and thereby made freemen; men 
seeking to express this truth and this freedom 
in institutions created for the good of the whole 
body pohtic. 

1. Religious Freedom. Here the State touches 
two great interests of the individual man, his re- 
hgious hfe and his pohtic al Hfe. We in America 
declare the State shall not say what we shall 
beheve or what we shall worship, or how we 
shall worship what we deem all-worthy. The 
State must leave us to decide what we regard 
as true, what we regard as worthy of worship; 
it must leave us free to adopt what we regard 
as the best method of worship. And here again 

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CHRISTIAN FREEDOM 

we are close to the Pilgrims as prophets of 
freedom; this is our inheritance from them, this 
distinction between State and Church. The 
authority of the State stops at the door of the 
sanctuary, and a man's creed is of his own 
thinking; a man's worship is to the being in 
whom he beheves, and the mode of his worship 
is according to his convenience and preference. 

No man can estimate what this inheritance 
is yet to do for the world. We are only begin- 
ning to see what religious freedom means. 
When men are free to beHeve in what they 
regard as the truth, free to worship what they 
hold to be the Eternal Excellence, free in all 
their methods of worship, that will mean a 
new world of sincerity, of insight, of character, 
of power in rehgion. 

2. Political Freedom. The second point at 
which the State touches freedom concerns the 
individual citizen. This country was founded 
to give reasonable and just opportunity to 
individual citizens, for the expression of what- 
ever gifts the Almighty had implanted in them, 
— industrial, intellectual, and spiritual. The 
American State is the guardian, the authorita- 
tive guardian of the utmost ordered opportun- 
ity for all men, that they may work out the 
gifts that are in them. The American State is 
not a nurse, it is not a hospital, it is not a 
syndicate of capitalists, it is not a union of 
laborers, it is not a paternaHsm of any kind; it 
is a majestic umpire in the free development of 

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CHRISTIAN FREEDOM 

all American talent; it is the great guarantor 
of fair play for all individuals; and, in the 
third place, it is the benevolent friend of the 
defeated and the unfortunate. 

This is the American conception of the State, 
the conception of the founders, and of the second 
founders; of those who fought that this Re- 
pubhc might come into being and of those who 
fought that it might continue in being. I re- 
peat that the American State is not a nurse, 
it is not a hospital, it is not a syndicate of 
money-changers, it is not a union of laborers, 
it is not a paternalism of any kind: it is an 
umpire in the free development of manifold 
power, it is a guarantor of fair play in the 
realization of the universal opportunity! 

This system is not without defects. It has 
this immortal merit, however; it has bred a 
race fit to found, fit to maintain, fit to defend, 
fit to perpetuate the institutions of free men! 
To-day is a solemn day in the Hfe of this na- 
tion. We are on the verge of War, and our 
population is made up largely of the kindred of 
those who are fighting one another in the con- 
tinent of Europe: Scot, EngHsh, Irish, Italian, 
French, Belgian on the one side; and of the 
nations fighting on the other side, all but one 
are generously represented in the American 
Repubhc. I would be the last to speak a bitter 
word or a word to hurt the sensibiHties of any 
man whose blood is derived from either of the 
Central Powers. But we have on our hands a 

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CHRISTIAN FREEDOM 

problem, and our question is, how shall we face 
it as a united America? The answer is, we must 
face it as our forefathers faced the Revolution. 

3. The Lesson of the Founders. Here is the 
great, impressive lesson for the composite 
America of to-day. Whom did the Colonists 
^ght? Their kindred, their fathers, their 
brothers, those who were bone of their bone 
and flesh of their flesh. It was Enghshman 
against Enghshman, Scot against Scot, and 
Irishman against Irishman. It was a war 
between kindred and between kinsmen who 
twenty years before had been profound and 
happy friends! Kinsmen, with the same lan- 
guage, with the same rehgion, with the same 
Uterature, with the same traditions of freedom 
and power and manhood, went forth to meet 
each other in battle. There is nothing like so 
tragic a situation in the America of to-day as 
we confront the possibilities of the future as 
there was when the Tea Party took place at 
the hands of those who gathered in the Old 
South Meetinghouse; or when Washington 
took command of the Continental Army under 
the old tree in Cambridge. What was their 
argument, conclusion, motive .^^ It was that 
every tie must be Hke tow in the fire when it 
comes to the question of the existence of free- 
dom among men born for freedom! 

I commend this example to my feUow adopted 
citizens of other blood than my own, and I know 
if the case were reversed I should take the lesson 

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CHRISTIAN FREEDOM 

to myself. What did I mean when I took the 
oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the 
United States and foreswore specially and spe- 
cifically all allegiance to the Queen of Great 
Britain? Preparation for any emergency and 
readiness to count freedom, American freedom, 
first, last, and all the time above every other 
interest. 

One lesson more from the Revolution. The 
revolutionists made a distinction clear and deep 
between the government of Great Britain and 
the people, between King George III and his 
lackeys and bhnd servants and tyrants, and the 
whole people. They knew that Chatham was 
with them, that the greatest political genius of 
the Enghsh race was with them, — Edmund 
Burke; they knew or might have known that 
the poet Burns was with them, who after the 
war wrote a great " Ode to Washington," who 
after the War sacrificed all possibihty of a pension 
from the Government by writing " A Dream" 
to George III, which I beg you to read. Let 
our Teutonic citizens, who are among the most 
substantial and the ablest and the worthiest of 
the adopted sons of America, — let them draw 
the distinction which your fathers drew in the 
day of their distress; let them draw the dis- 
tinction between the Teutonic peoples and the 
Teutonic government. And remember that if 
he were free to speak, the true Teuton would 
say that no nation has a right to hmit the just 
freedom of the United States; subject it to 

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CHRISTIAN FREEDOM 

indignity; to murder its women and children 
on the high seas, or to confine its industry and 
influence within its own bounds. 

We are one to-day, one in our behef in free 
institutions, one in our sense of obhgation to 
the American Repubhc, and all ties even of 
the most sacred character must be, as I have 
said, hke tow in the fire when it comes to the 
question whether America shall be first or the 
country of our descent or our birth. 

The President of the United States has been 
patient, patient to the utmost hmit, so patient 
that the world has been in danger of misunder- 
standing him. Let us thank God to-day for 
his patience, for his clearness, for his solemn 
decision, and for his hope that war may yet 
be averted. Let us be ready, with our faith, 
our prayer, our manhood, and all our resources 
to stand behind the Government that guards 
the heritage of the American people. 



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